Post News Network
Bhubaneswar: Learning a lesson from the prevailing drought situation and farmers’ suicides, the state government has decided to develop a comprehensive crop insurance policy for both the indebted farmers and non-loanee farmers.
The decision was taken at a high-level meeting held here Monday under the chairmanship of Chief Secretary Aditya Parsad Padhi to finalise thematic areas of agriculture budget for financial year 2016-17.
Padhi directed the concerned department officials to develop a comprehensive crop insurance policy for the loanee and non-loanee farmers. He asked the officials to help early disbursal of compensatory assistance by the insurance companies to the farmers.
The chief secretary also advised rationalised subsidy and incentive structures to maximise the outcome and enhance productivity in each of the sectors like paddy and non-paddy farming, fishery, animal husbandry and horticulture among other things.
Considering the suggestions put forth by experts and concerned departments, he advised the agriculture department to prepare a thematic budget for the next fiscal with the objective of maximising the outcome through convergence of various schemes at ground level.
Development commissioner R Balakrishnan directed the finance department to consolidate the suggestions relating to the farm sector as proposed by members of the general public, civil society, advocacy groups and stakeholders through ‘open budge initiative’ started this year.
It was decided that the agriculture department would make efforts to adopt these suggestions while preparing the draft budget, sources said.
Besides, they decided to develop a comprehensive programme for maximizing use of the irrigation water through a convergence approach between agriculture and water resource and cooperation departments.
Notably, the state government had started a separate agriculture budget in 2013-14 fiscal. Over the last three years, there has been constant increase in the budgetary allocation in this sector.
The state’s first agriculture budget was `7,161crore, which was enhanced to `10,903crore in 2015-16. The budget size again increased to `8,060crore in 2014-15 and last year the budget was `10,903 crore.
